We must keep close eye on Congress

OUR VIEW

Let's not do that again.

Let's not put 2 million Americans out of work for the sake of pride and political gamesmanship. And let's not invite the world to turn its back on our creditworthiness and what is still (amazingly) the global reserve currency - the U.S. dollar.

We know there's a good chance that in just three short months, federal workers could face furloughs again and that just a month after that, our heads will bump up against the debt ceiling again. But that doesn't have to happen.

Wednesday's federal budget deal has a lot of moving parts; one of the best of those is this: House and Senate negotiators must, by Dec. 13 of this year, issue recommendations for longer-term spending levels and deficit reduction. If the negotiations are carried out in good faith, then Americans shouldn't have to see the Lincoln Memorial closed on Jan. 15, or the credit-rating agencies flying in slow circles like buzzards over the Treasury Building around Feb. 7.

Americans ought to cast a suspicious eye on those negotiations, because the lawmakers involved will be the same ones who allowed things to get this bad. However, at that point, primaries for every House member and many senators will be just a few months away. Even voters with notoriously short memories will most likely remember in August who put them into default in February.

For all the talk about how gerrymandering and super PACs have made incumbents invincible, they don't protect the lawmakers from themselves. What they do about restoring fiscal responsibility between now and Christmas will tell the tale in November 2014.

Here, though, is the key point to remember today, as you nurse an aching shutdown hangover: Each of us can't let our guard down; not anymore. The impulse is to forget about the government troubles for a while. But we must not. The people we have sent to Washington need a lot of adult supervision.

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We must keep close eye on Congress

Let's not do that again. Let's not put 2 million Americans out of work for the sake of pride and political gamesmanship. And let's not invite the world to turn its back on our creditworthiness and

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